


the stars are not wanted now (put out every one)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [63]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Also Feanor expects Fingolfin to be on board with his conspiracy theories, Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Finwe's funeral, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV First Person, Wakes & Funerals, and Fingolfin needs SPACE, there are obviously lots more characters but these are the four from whose perspective we see it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 13:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18592684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Finwe's funeral is the end of an era.





	the stars are not wanted now (put out every one)

_i. Galadriel_

Even the horses have black ribbons braided into their manes. I wonder if our stable-boy scoffed at the task, or if he, too, grieved.

It feels as if the whole city is in mourning. _I_  am chiefly struck by the injustice of this, though Mother and Father have exclaimed over the kindness of strangers.

Where was that kindness when Grandfather stepped out his door, two weeks ago—and how can the people who did not save him bear to mourn?

Of course, if I follow that thought like a thread, as Finrod taught me, I shall come to blame us, too. All our family, too busy with fighting amongst ourselves to know that a killer had poor, dear Grandfather in his sights.

But no— _no_ , I say to the Finrod in my mind (the real one is gone away west, and will have to learn of this tragedy by lonely letter),  _we of Finarfin’s house have never been the cause of quarrels_. How many times have I restrained myself from boxing Feanorian ears? And they always deserve it.

“Artanis,” my father says, and though his eyes are very red he does not look embarrassed, as we are all very open in our feelings, and know no shame in honest tears. “Come away from the horses. The carriage is ready.”

I lift my skirt—black silk, we are all in black, and I hate it—and follow him.

I have not yet cried. I am fourteen, and a girl, but I have not cried. Surely this means that there is something wrong with me.

My mother passes out fresh handkerchiefs as we trundle along. Angrod and Aegnor look a little dazed. My father rests his elbow against the windowpane and cups his chin in his hand.

“It is such a beautiful day,” Mother says softly.

Father’s eyes well up with tears again, but he smiles. “It is indeed,” he agrees. “ _He_  would have loved this blue sky, and would have told us that it meant we ought to shed no tears.”

“Take another handkerchief, Finarfin,” Mother pleads, but he shakes his head.”

“No, no. We must save some for Feanor.”

Because it is my father, I shall say nothing in anger, but I clench my teeth, my jaw rattling, and I frown. Why should uncle Feanor be considered, or be allowed to attend at all? Even in happier years, he was rude to Grandmother and most of the rest of us. Lately, his sins have been far worse than this.

I was there—we all were—when he held a pistol to my uncle Fingolfin’s breast. That was little more than a year ago.

Are we to forgive him so soon? Is that what my father's love of peace demands?

It cannot be. I cannot bear to accept it. I cannot--

Oh, I cannot even cry.

The cobbled streets are passing underneath us. My father and my mother and my brothers speak a little, pray a little, and I am left in silence. I did not know my grandfather so well as some of my cousins, but I loved him. He was unfailingly kind, and that is my father’s greatest virtue as well as his greatest flaw—how could I not love and protect the both of them?

How could none of us protect him on that fateful day?

“Galadriel,” my mother says, calling me, as she often does, by the middle name that I prefer. “Take a handkerchief, my love. Do not ruin your pretty collar.”

It is only then that I become aware of the tears coursing down my cheeks.

_ii. Turgon_

For as many years as I can remember, we have attended Sunday mass at Saint Patrick’s—a church with a Roman Mass and an Irish name, as suited my grandfather and my elder uncle.

A part of me—some might say quite a substantial part, for I often think I am the only one of my siblings to foster warranted resentment—wishes that we had followed in the footsteps of Grandmother Indis, and attended the English church. That is what Uncle Finarfin quietly does, and no one chides him for it. If  _we_  had done so, of course, we would have been chided. Uncle Feanor would have raged, and Grandfather Finwe would have asked my father to keep the peace—and so we are staunchly Catholic, in service of a peace my uncle broke with a gun aimed at my father’s heart, and a Grandfather who lies dead in a great black coffin.

My father did not move when the news came. He did not cry out. I thought he looked like snow had fallen over him, whitening his cheeks, silvering hair I already knew to be greyed.

Our carriage stops before the doors of the church, and Fingon leaps out first, with an eagerness that I fear is rooted in the opportunity to see cousin Maedhros as much as it is directed towards hastening past painful demonstrations of grief.

No, that is not quite fair to him. Fingon loved our grandfather, with all the adoring endearment he bestows on the objects of his affections.

For Fingon, to love is to worship. He would never be content outside the Roman church. 

I follow him inside.

There is something cloying about the scent of lilies. Here, there are lilies everywhere, and I want to choke. They are so sweet, so heavy, and yet beneath their scent is the stone-dust of the church, and beyond that, farther still, is the stench of the streets. 

So, what good are lilies?

The family pews are empty; we are the first to arrive. My father pauses, shoulders tensed beneath the tailored cloth of his frockcoat, and I know, a dense knot of rage forming in my gut, what stalls him.

He enters the second pew.

“We are here before them,” I hiss, and of course _that_ gets Fingon to notice me. He shakes his head in superior rebuke. His eyes are already damp again; he cried in the carriage, too, silently.

“Not now, Turgon,” he warns—and though I hear gentleness in his voice, there is not, nor has there ever been, any worship there.

We kneel. Father rises from his knees at last to greet Grandmother Indis, taking her gloved hands and kissing her through the shadow of her widow’s veil.

“Mother,” he says, and his voice breaks, just a little. Argon and Aredhel are clinging to Mama, as though they are not half-grown themselves, Fingon is close by my father, ready to greet Grandmother, and I am—

I am useless. Useless, as my father’s voice breaks.

Grandmother does not release his hands for a moment. “May I share your pew?” she asks, and Father’s shoulders jerk a little again, as he contemplates the request.

“The first ought to be yours,” he says, though he, a few moments ago, refused to take it for himself.

“Not today,” Grandmother murmurs. “I cannot bear, Fingolfin, to make a quarrel today.”

She is too kind. My father, whom many think so stern—even, sometimes, Fingon—is too kind. I bite my tongue to keep back another protest, and we all shift along the narrow alley between the kneeler and the bench to leave a seat along the aisle for my grandmother.

The pallbearers shall be Uncle Feanor and his sons. The first pew shall belong to Uncle Feanor and his sons.

And they are late.

_iii. Curufin_

I do not want to be here.

I do not want Grandfather Finwe to be dead, of course, but I also think he would not want us to be standing with our boots muddied by a warm August rain, lowering his casket into earth that smells like life and death at once.

Grandfather Finwe would have wanted Athair to be happy. And so he would not have wanted— _ever_ —for Athair to have to bury him. Certainly he would not desire Athair to stand by the side of Fingolfin, my half-uncle, who has done nothing but cause Athair grief since they were boys together, years and years ago.

When I remember Athair and Fingolfin and the guns of last summer, my ribs feel like they are growing smaller, and so I do my best not to remember.

 _Would you rather Athair be dead and Grandfather Finwe still living?_ I asked Maedhros this morning, and he almost burned his hand on the iron he was using on the twins’ Sunday shirts.

 _Curufin,_ Maglor said sharply, overhearing the question, _Lord’s sake, you’re such a little viper._

Athair had sent all the servants home upon our arrival to the city. The chores fell to us. Caranthir blacked our shoes, and Celegorm and I were sent running a dozen errands, and even the twins helped Athair polish the silver we used to pin our cuffs and throats.

“Silver?” Mother nagged. “For a funeral?” But she fell silent when Athair looked at her, and who among us would not? All the fire in his eyes is gone these days— _has_ been gone, since the news came.

When I think of the news coming, it is more than my chest that hurts.

The rain is falling harder now. Athair reaches for a clod of soil, and he casts it down into the gaping maw of dirt with a hand that does not shake. He does not weep. Maedhros is weeping, sobbing into his handkerchief in a most undignified manner, and Maglor is close beside him, not even concealing his tears in such a way. Maglor lifts his face to the sky, letting his tears mingle with the rain.

That is Maglor.

When Athair has released his handful of soil, I see Uncle Fingolfin step forward, but Athair raises his head and looks at him. Uncle Fingolfin’s teeth grind in his mouth. He stands aside.

We go first, then, as we are always meant to go first.

Maedhros empties his hand over the casket, and then he does what he always seems to do—eclipses whatever duties a son owes, or in this case, I suppose, what duties a _grandson_ owes. He kneels, uncaring how his fine black trousers meet the muddy earth, and he bows his head into his dirty hands. How is my brother so broken, when Athair, whose father it is in the ground, stands high and statue-still?

No one moves. Not Maglor, whose turn it is next. Not Athair. Mother’s face is twisted, screwed with stopped-up weeping.

Then Fingon, his ugly doctor’s hat under his arm, crosses the grass until he is near enough to lay a hand on Maedhros’s shoulder.

So—even with the rift between our families, even with our father’s claim on our loyalty, their friendship remains.

Maedhros staggers to his feet, and there is Fingon’s hand on his arm helping him, and there is Athair, white and blazing—

Fingon says something, low, to my brother. My brother answers him. For a moment, we are trapped again, as I have seen flies trapped in amber. _No one moves_ , I think. _No one moves, why is that?_

Then Uncle Fingolfin steps forward, looking at nothing but the path of his own steps, and lifts his own handful from the mound for Grandfather Finwe’s grave.

_iv. Caranthir_

Sometimes I wish Indis was our grandmother. It’s a blasphemous thought, and I shan’t say it, but I feel a twinge of guilt when we stand around in her parlor—it was Grandfather Finwe’s, before, but it’s only hers, now—and eat her cakes.

Surely she would rather be alone, or with _her_ sons, than feeding and comforting a family that has always rejected her.

I blink back my rebellion, trapping it under my eyelids with the tears I’ve been plagued by all day, and I take another biscuit.

They are here, after all.

Mother is with our aunts, and the twins are stuffing their faces in a manner that makes me almost ashamed of my third morsel. There are so many cousins, and I want to crawl under the tablecloth, as I was wont to do when I was small. There was a time when I might have been happier to see them, but we have scarcely met at all in the last year, since—

Well, since Athair was nearly tried for murder of Uncle Fingolfin.

And now we meet only because our grandfather _was_ murdered, by some hellish fiend we know not.

“Fingolfin,” Athair’s voice rings across the room. I nearly cough, which would spray biscuit crumbs everywhere and disgrace my family. My nose and throat are already scratchy with the effects of incense at Mass—a trait I share with Athair, though I have never seen him so much as sneeze—but it is not incense that makes me short of breath now, here, in what was once my grandfather’s parlor.

My uncle stands from his seat, setting down his coffee cup.

“I would have a word,” Athair says. I do not know if anyone else can tell—if Maedhros, terribly pale, as he has been too often lately, even before the news came—can tell, but I do not think Athair is angry.

My uncle listens not to the whispers of his wife, nor to Fingon’s murmured, _Father, wait_. He and Athair disappear behind the door of Grandfather’s study.

They reappear, half an hour later, and Athair’s face is flushed.

When will his tears come, I wonder? The rest of us have cried. The twins were inconsolable, the first night, and Mother and Maedhros stayed up with them.

We shall leave this afternoon for Formenos, and my two oldest brothers will remain behind. That, too, is a loss—though not one I may complain of.

There is so much I cannot say aloud.

“We are leaving,” Athair says. He _does_ sound angry now, and disappointed, but there is nothing wild in his eyes that would make me afraid.  

Hastily, we run our rounds of farewells. Athair waits by the door, not even saying a word in parting to Indis or his half-brothers, to my aunts or my cousins.

When we bundle into the carriage, cramped for room even though Maedhros and Maglor ride behind, Mother asks—

“My love?” with a question only in tone.

Athair settles back against his cushions, his long coat wrapped around him like a shield. He says, “Fingolfin did not believe me.”


End file.
